Check out my to-do list:

• I want to lose about 25 pounds.
• I want to learn to play the bass guitar (and, for that matter, the regular guitar, but first things first).
• I want to de-clutter the garage (ay yi yi) — and come to think of it, there’s plenty of clutter inside the house that needs dealing with as well.
• I want to complete two new book proposals, and edit one of my out-of-print books for the publication of a new/revised edition.
• I want to improve my daily fidelity to contemplative prayer and the Liturgy of the Hours.
• I want to save enough money to purchase a vacation/retirement home in the not too distant future (I’m almost 49 and my wife is 51, so now’s the time to be making those kinds of decisions).

What do all of these goals have in common? They require discipline.

It’s one thing to say “I want to visit Spain some day.” You find the money (even if, God forbid, that means using a credit card), you book the flight, you get there and rent a car and off you go. Nothing to it (except figuring out how to pay off those credit cards once you get home).

But my goals are different. None of them can be achieved in a day, or a month. They all require small actions done repeatedly, over time. They are goals that are manifested as the result of cumulative choices. This is really what discipline is all about.

I have a confession to make. In many ways, I’m an old hippie, and the word “discipline” frightens me. It conjures up notions of obsessive compulsive behavior, rigidity and inflexible personality traits, a general killjoy approach to life. “Can’t eat that candy bar, it will ruin my discipline.” So I’ve become pretty disciplined at being indisciplined.

Of course, I shouldn’t be too harsh on myself. A decade ago, I had credit card debt that was close to a year’s salary (ah, the foolishness of youth); I finally paid the last bill off earlier this year. Writing ten and a half books requires no little discipline, and even keeping this blog going is a matter of making small choices every day. So I’m no stranger to discipline. But still, every time I try to take on a new discipline, the old teenager in me gets riled up once again.

I recently read an article about “calorie cycling” — the idea that one way to burn off fat is to trick the body into keeping metabolism high, by varying the amount of food eaten from day to day. Have enough “normal eating” days to keet the metabolism revved up, but then insert days of more restricted intake, where the body will start to break down fat to keep the motors running at the accustomed speed. I don’t know if it’s good science, but it seems reasonable on a common-sense level, so I’m thinking I’ll try it.

I think discipline works somewhat the same way. We have to trick ourselves into taking it on. Perhaps the best way to do this involves fun. I have a friend who is a professional musician, and he jokes about how, when his mom and dad gave him a guitar at age 12, his social life tanked — because he was spending four or five hours a day playing the guitar, rather than hanging out with his friends. Another guitarist I know jokes about how, when he was a teenager, the two most common sentences out of his mother’s mouth were “Put away your guitar and do your homework” and “Put away your guitar and go to bed!” These guys became accomplished musicians because playing the guitar was so much fun. They didn’t sit down and say “Okay, if I ever want to play like Jimmy Page I’ll have to devote at least an hour a day, every day, for the next ten years” or some such silliness. Heh. An hour a day, for them, was just getting started. Their discipline was their joy.

I’ve mentioned more than once on this blog my friends Shipp and Judith Webb, who are successful jewelers. They have a wonderful home and studio nestled in the woods of Lost Cove, Tennessee, where they make simple but lovely handcrafted silver earrings. In their studio, they used to (I haven’t been there in years, maybe it’s still there) have a sign hanging up that said, simply, “Discipline is knowing what you want.”

This remains the most beautiful, simple and elegant definition of discipline I’ve ever found. It’s about making small choices, every day, one day at a time, in alignment with what I want. And it’s about having fun doing this.

For me, this is a work in progress. I haven’t figured out how to have fun de-cluttering the garage yet. But it is fun to visualize the garage neat, clean and orderly. It’s fun to play a simple tune like “Amazing Grace” on the bass. It’s fun to transfer money into savings every week after I deposit my paycheck. My goal is to make discipline so much fun that I forget it’s discipline.

So… what does all this have to do with the contemplative life, the life of exploring the Christian mysteries?

Here’s where I think contemplatives can learn a thing or two from our charismatic brothers and sisters. I was speaking with a Trappist monk the other day and mentioned that I had some dealings with the charismatics back in the ’70s. He smiled and said, “Ah, yes, the charismatics. They reminded us that it can be fun to worship God.” Such a simple insight, and yet one that had eluded me for so long. And yet it explains better than anything else why that particular expression of spirituality continues to grow in popularity. The same can be said for Wicca and other forms of Neopagan spirituality. Measure their strengths and weaknesses all you wish, but a central reason why these types of spirituality prosper is because they’re so much fun to explore.

But… how do we turn the Liturgy of the Hours, or a daily commitment to lectio divina, or an hour a day devoted to silence, into fun? I think the answer here has to do with learning to appreciate the subtle side of fun. These practices are designed to yield their treasures slowly, a little bit at a time, over the long haul. Unlike a typical hit song that is designed to sell a million copies in 90 days and be forgotten by next year, the genius of mystical practices lie in how they are engineered to reward perseverence and gentle stability. It’s amazing how meditation, for example, continues to reward me, after more than 25 years of practice; it gives me hope for all sorts of unimagined (but subtle and simple) joys that I will find in the practice over the next 25 years. But those rewards are like learning to tell the difference between two fine wines. It’s not going to hit anyone over the head. Contemplative spirituality brings us into the deeper places of our soul, where both a shyness and a wildness come into play. Learning to navigate these deep places is challenging and rewarding, although the rewards are so minute that if we don’t pay attention we’ll miss them.

So discipline is knowing what we want, and having fun going after what we want, and learning to re-calibrate our “fun meter” so that we can begin to enjoy even the subtlest fun to come our way. With all this in mind, we can turn the challenges of the contemplative life into an adventure lived daily.

Now, about that garage…

Recently I received this sobering comment from a woman named Karen, posted to the Mystics page of this website:

God abandoned me, killed my brother, father and mother and left me with no family
God hurts people and could choose to help but doesn’t
It is hard to understand why he makes some people suffer so and gives so much to others, not very charitable

Karen, while there are many details of your situation that I do not know, it seems clear to me that you are dealing with profound suffering. First of all, let me say that I am very sorry for your pain.

Everyone’s situation is different, but mine is not empty of suffering. My father is wasting away with dementia, after losing my mother almost three years ago. But even worse than that is my stepdaughter’s situation. Born with polycistic kidney disease and related liver disease, she suffered a stroke at age 3 and now, at 24, is confined to a wheelchair, with impaired kidney functioning, end-stage liver disease, and intellectual disability. She regularly has to have blood transfusions to stay alive. She is incapable of caring for herself and must spend her day in a boring day-care facility while her mother and I work. The doctors have turned her down for transplants because of her limited self-care skills, and predict that she will need dialysis, possibly within a year. She will likely die within the next five to ten years. Needless to say, while she has an amazing personality, she is naturally very angry and depressed over her life circumstances. Just as painful for me is seeing how this has inconsolably broken her mother’s heart. My wife is a strong and resilient woman, but there is a shadow on her soul that only someone who has watched their child suffer while powerless to do anything about it can understand.

Karen, I’m not telling you this to say “my suffering’s worse than yours,” because of course no one could anyone ever compare their pain to another’s. I only tell you a bit about my story to let you know that I am no stranger to suffering.

It seems to me that you are standing at the threshold of one of life’s most profound mysteries: the mystery of why a good God allows evil and suffering to persist. There are many ways to respond to this mystery. Some people see it as proof that God doesn’t exist. Others see it as evidence that God is not good. Others, like myself, see it as pointing to the limitations of the human mind to fathom everything that is going on in the universe.

Given the fact that we have a choice of how to respond to the mystery, I believe our choice is important. It’s important whether we respond to suffering by saying “I believe in Love” or not.

Yes, I said “Love.” Christianity teaches that God is Love, and I believe this with all my heart. In fact, when I read over your comment, I re-phrased it like this:

Love abandoned me, killed my brother, father and mother and left me with no family
Love hurts people and could choose to help but doesn’t
It is hard to understand why Love makes some people suffer so and gives so much to others, not very charitable

Karen, does this ring true to you? Is this what you mean to say? If not, then I wonder if you have a distorted idea of who God is. Perhaps you equate God with fate or kismet, or with bad luck, or with the indifference of nature. If so, I invite you to reconsider who God is.

God is not fate, for God (Love) is bigger than fate. God is not luck (good or bad), for God (Love) is bigger than luck. God is not nature, for God (Love) is bigger than nature. When fate, or luck, or nature result in bad things happening to us or to those we love, we can be tempted to blame God for the bad things. But blaming God doesn’t help. In fact, in my experience it doesn’t even feel good. Blaming God for my pain just causes me more pain.

The great mystics teach that sometimes we do experience God as abandoning us. God seems to be absent in the midst of our deepest suffering. Why could this be? Is this because God doesn’t care? Or perhaps Love has its reasons, that are beyond our understanding?

If I say God doesn’t care, then I am saying “No” to Love. In the short term this might seem like protecting myself from further pain. But in the long run, it can only lead to a meaningless and loveless life. But on the other hand, if I believe that God does care, then I am saying “Yes” to Love. I am saying “Yes” to life and to hope. Note that this does not take away our pain, and frankly it might make sense to go out in a field somewhere and scream our lungs out, telling God just how angry we are! Because when we suffer, we do get angry. We get furious, we get enraged. We want to break things and do mean things to God. We would hurt God if we could. And the fact that we can’t hurt God just makes us madder.

And God loves us through all of this. For just as God is bigger than fate, or luck, or nature, God is also bigger than our pain and our suffering, and God is bigger than our rage and our fury. Love is the answer. And at the end of the day, it’s our choice whether to accept Love even in the midst of our pain, or to reject Love.

You know what else, Karen? What I have seen in life is that everyone suffers, sooner or later. Sooner or later even the ones who seem on the surface to have been “given so much” will suffer pain and loss. And we can never judge if our suffering is “worse” than theirs. All we can do is try to help one another when we see each other suffer (and we can learn a lot about God when we choose to help one another, but I’ll leave that one for you to explore on your own). It’s not that God wants us to suffer in some sort of sadistic way, but rather that God allows us to suffer. A spiritual teacher I highly respect, Richard Rohr, says that great love and great suffering are the doorways to higher consciousness. I believe he’s right. God gives us love, and God allows us to suffer. How we respond to these mysteries is up to us; but we are always given the choice to say “Yes” to Love.

One more thing I believe: God does not abandon us forever. Love waits for us to open our hearts. Love is the source of serenity and peace. If we feel like Love is absent, then the best thing we can do is to seek Love with all our heart. To cry for Love, to hunger for Love, to live for Love. In my experience, such yearning does get rewarded. Maybe not as soon as we would like. But Love will not abandon us forever. And when Love comes, Love brings peace and hope.

This is what I hope for you, Karen. May Love bring you peace and hope.

Abram and Sarai were called to leave their homes and travel to the west. John the Baptist was called to preach in the desert. Jesus was called into the desert to fast and pray. Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus and was called to go into the city there and submit to one of the leaders of the Christian community.

Call — in fancy Latin parlance, “vocation” — is a foundational experience of the Christian spiritual life. Normally we think of the concept of call in relation to Holy Orders, as in a person being called to the priesthood or to the monastic life. But marriage is also understood as a vocation — God calls us into the life of the person we wed.

How does the concept of call relate to mysticism?

If we take Karl Rahner and William McNamara at face value (Rahner said “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all,” while McNamara said “The mystic is not a special kind of person; every person is a special kind of mystic”), then we can assume that all Christians are called to enter into the mysteries in some way. It’s not as if some people win the lottery while everyone else gets to applaud. Union with God is not an extraordinary Christian vocation, it is the ordinary vocation of the Christian life. But what does that look like? If everyone ran off to the monastery, who would raise the next generation of children? If everyone gave over their entire waking lives to blissful meditation, then who will raise our food? That’s a caricature, of course; even contemplative monks are required to earn their own keep. So we have to disabuse ourselves of any notion that mysticism somehow involves a retreat form the practicalities of life. Rather, the call to enter the mysteries of God includes a coterminous call to enter more deeply the mysteries of ordinary life, including the mysteries of love, of work, of money, of community. Mysticism does not change who we are; it makes us more truly who we are.

I believe the call to be a mystic is, in fact, the call to live life deeply, passionately, wildly, joyfully. It is a call to make the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) — love, joy, serenity, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and moderation — central to our identity and experience. And if “moderation” and “wildness” seem to be at odds, remember the old saying: “everything in moderation, including moderation.” Sometimes, mysticism is like the extreme sports of God. It can take us to the edge of our comfort zone, to the dangerous places of our psyche and our relationships and  indeed our world. Maybe some of us are called to settle down in those dangerous places, and we become heroes of the faith like the desert fathers and mothers or, for that matter, Mother Teresa. Others only go to visit those on-the-edge points once or maybe twice in our entire life. That’s okay.

Because the paradox here is that, while the call to the mysteries is a general call, each of us will receive a unique calling. “Every person is a special kind of mystic.” We are like snowflakes: no two contemplatives are alike. Consider the importance of silence and solitude on the one hand, and discernment and spiritual friendship on the other. We each need silence and the space to listen for the nearly inaudible whispers of our own unique call. Where, in the silence, are we beckoned to explore? Discernment and the wise counsel of a spiritual friend or guide or director can help us from mis-hearing or misinterpreting the whispers of our vocation. As always, Christian mysticism is anchored in the community of faith.

We have to get over the idea that renowned contemplatives like Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux are somehow different than ourselves. Yes, they were consecrated religious; yes, they were gifted authors; yes, they were profound teachers. But you know, you probably can do some things a lot better than they could, and it just so happens that their gifts included a measure of celebrity, which (especially for a monk or a nun) is more curse than blessing. But there’s a 95% or more sameness between you and me and the “great” mystics. We need to bear this in mind. The 5% is where the uniqueness of our call kicks in, and it’s an adventure to discover just how my dance of intimacy with God will look like no other dance that ever existed. Meanwhile, you’re on your own road of singular God-discovery. Thanks to the samenesss we share, we can learn about and support each other on our unique pathways, even though we cannot walk the whole length of them together. There, again, is the splendor and importance of community.

So take some time and listen for your call. Chances are it will surprise you. Remember in The Sound of Music when the nuns couldn’t find Maria (because she was up on the mountaintop, singing)? One of the sisters said to the Mother Superior, “I’ve looked in all the usual places.” The abbess replied, “Considering that it is Maria, I suggest you look in someplace unusual.” The process of discerning our mystical vocation is probably a lot like looking for Maria. We need to look in the unusual places.

I’ve been thinking about how so many self-help books begin with “How to…” Consider these examples:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• How to Raise the Perfect Dog
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
• How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
• How to Lie with Statistics

… and there are many, many more. But to the best of my knowledge, no one has written a book on How to Become a Christian Mystic. I wonder if such a book would be useful to people.

One of the pleasures of blogging about mysticism is that from time to time I hear from people who confidently proclaim that they are mystics.

Part of me is curious, when I hear from such a person, as to how they got to be a mystic. And another part of me really doesn’t want to know.

In the Neopagan world, among so-called traditionalist witches it is considered bad form to call yourself a witch if you have not been duly initiated by another witch, which usually only will happen after a period of study. Likewise, a person who goes around saying that he or she is a shaman often will find little or no respect from those who have spent years studying with indigenous healers and spiritual guides. Meanwhile, in the Catholic Church one does not declare oneself to be a saint — sainthood is only conferred to those who have been canonized by the Pope.

The common theme, here, is that there seems to be a difference between using a word to describe oneself, and then actually doing the hard work and the inner transformation that such a word points to. Talk is cheap. I can call myself a witch or a shaman or a druid or a saint, and people will laugh at me behind my back. Or, I can live the life of sanctity or wisdom or spiritual transformation and not spend too much time worrying about what you call it.

I think mysticism works the same way. So this question: “how do I become a mystic?” is, paradoxically, best answered in a zen-like way: “Forget about it!”

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be a mystic. In fact, I would feel far better if someone wrote to me and said “I would like to be a mystic” rather than simply tell me that they already are one. I think there’s something natural about learning of the extraordinary lives of great contemplatives and visionaries like Julian of Norwich or Teresa of Avila and thinking, “Gee, I would like my life to follow a similar course.” After all, one of the reasons why saints are saints is because their lives are worthy of imitation. I think the same holds true for the great mystics.

So while the initial motivation for asking “How do I become a mystic?” is, I believe, both understandable and laudable, almost as soon as the question is asked we are faced with the paradox I mentioned above: that the last thing you want to do is say you already are one. Throwing the word around doesn’t make it so. Deciding you want to go to medical school does not make you a doctor. Feeling an inner call to the life of holiness and contemplation is a beautiful thing. But especially at first, it is a fragile and vulnerable thing, and we need to protect it and nurture it and provide it with shelter and nutrients so that the calling can find its strength. If as soon as we discern the call to a contemplative life we begin to buffet it with the gale-force winds of empty words and ego-driven need for status and specialness, we will likely kill the vocation, like uprooting a seedling before it has a chance to set down firm roots.

So how does someone like you or me nurture a call to become a mystic? If we feel like we want to be mystics, what is the first thing we should do? My sense is that, instead of using the words “mystic” and “mysticism,” we should begin by making sure we understand them. When I think of mysticism, what am I thinking of? Holiness? Sanctity? God-intoxication? Profound silence and solitude? Charismatic or miraculous experiences? Visions and voices? A commitment to daily practices such as contemplative prayer, the Daily Office, and lectio divina? Or just a warm, fuzzy sense that God is present in my life and loves me?

What is the relationship between being a Christian mystic and being the member of a community of faith, such as a church, or house church, or centering prayer group, or prayer & praise meeting, or monastic oblate association? I personally think that you can’t be a mystic without being embedded in community — even the great mystic hermits and solitaries, like the desert fathers and mothers, or Julian of Norwich, or the mature Thomas Merton, lived out their vocation of solitude with ties to community or church in some form. But maybe you have a different notion. After all, our culture is one that mistrusts community, lionizing the individual over the group. So many people might think a mystic is some sort of Christian individualist, with a cool connection with God that is unencumbered by the messy demands of other people. I personally think that such a notion is way off-base, reflecting the values of the world rather than the values of heaven. But my point here is that you need to know exactly what it is you are trying to be with your spiritual life.

So once we have figured out what we understand mysticism to be, then comes the question of how do we make it real in our own lives? There is no “mystic school” in the sense that there is medical school or law school. Traditionally, people went to monasteries to pursue the contemplative life, and perhaps that is your call. In fact, if you are single and the member of a church with monasteries, I would commend to you the process of discerning whether the consecrated life might be for you. But for many of us, monastic life is not an option. So what do we do?

If you want to pray, then pray. If you want to be holy, then begin to make virtue a priority in your life. If you want to meditate, then meditate. If you want to grow in love of neighbor, then immerse yourself in community. If you want to experience God, then perhaps you need to do all of the above!

And so this is the real kicker: the most reliable path to becoming a mystic is, simply, the path of following Christ. Like Evangelicals, we need to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Like Catholics, we need to make Communion a priority. Like Lutherans, we need to nurture our faith. Like the Orthodox, we need to make sure the name of Jesus is always on our lips. We need to read the Gospels and make the stories of this wild carpenter-turned-rabbi part of our daily lives. We need to go and do what he said. We need to make his mind our mind, and open our hearts to his heart. We need to be so focussed on Christ (instead of ourselves) that we stop worrying about whether we are mystics or not.

And once that happens, we will have begun the journey.

Oh, one final word: I really don’t mean to slam people who call themselves mystics. Ours is a culture of flash and show, and so I think it is normal to want to claim something special for our identity. But I do think it would be more useful — and more rewarding in the long run — to let the words go and simply focus on being who we believe God wants us to be. And then others can decide what to call us.

I’ve just found a new website devoted to interfaith dialogue and spirituality that looks very promising. Check it out: www.interfaithing.com

My brother alerted me to an article that ran in the Boston Globe on Sunday by Harvey Cox, called “Why Fundamentalism Will Fail.” Among other things, this hopeful essay suggests that fundamentalism is on the way out because mysticism is on the way in.

I only hope he’s right.

Here’s a link to the article: http://shar.es/akIMO

Is there a difference between “union with God” and “intimacy with God”?

Unpack the etymology of intimacy and you’ll find that it has to do with speaking, announcing, making known. Intimacy means self-disclosure. I tell you who I am. I listen as you tell me who you are. So there seems to be a relationship between intimacy and language. Sure, in human terms we speak of “being intimate” as a code-word for sexual intercourse, but isn’t sexual intimacy a physical expression of words such as “I love you,” “I desire you,” “I want you,” “I give myself to you”?

As we relate to God who is bigger than any material thing, obviously there is no physical expression of intimacy, but this does not mean there is no erotic dimension to intimacy with God. On the contrary. Intimacy with God is not only profoundly erotic, but is indeed the foundation and form of all human eros — the experience of making love, even illicitly, can happen only because of humanity’s essential participation in the eros that emerges from the Divine. God is love, and this means all forms of love. God is desire, God is friendship, God is compassion, God is charity, God is over-flowing self-donation. And God is eager to tell us all about it. And then God waits in silence, eager to hear us tell God all about who we are, and the choices we make, and the dreams we hold dear, and the shames we bury or the fears we try to ignore. And out of this conversation, by this conversation, through this conversation, intimacy happens.

Back to my initial question: is intimacy with God the same thing as union with God? I think union is the summit and completion of intimacy. But even there, language fails us, for intimacy with God is never complete, never perfected, never reaches the final mountaintop. Always there is a higher, more majestic, more splendid peak to scale. Does this mean we never attain union with God? Some have said as much, suggesting that final union with God is attained only after death. I’m not sure I buy that, in that I suspect that eternity will unfold and expand just as surely as space and time do. So perhaps union with God is not merely a telos, but rather, paradoxically, is as much a present reality as a future hope. We are already in union with God, by virtue of being God’s beloved creation and bearing God’s image and likeness and existing in the universe of God’s making. We are so fully immersed in the ocean of Divine Love that we go through most of our days blissfully unaware of this blissful fact. Back to intimacy: God is just waiting for us to slow down and listen long enough so that his Word can get through to us. “Pay attention, or you’ll miss it!” We’ll miss the fact that we are creatures of love. We’ll miss the fact that God’s love for us is bigger than our sin — our resistance and rejection of that love. We’ll miss the fact that we are called to have the Mind of Christ and to partake in the Divine Nature. We’ll miss the fact that we are already in union with God.

We are already in Union with God, and yet, intimacy with God is the glorious, falling-in-love process of rediscovering that union and realizing it in our lives. It is a scary and heady and exhilarating thing. God asks of us nothing less than our entire lives, asking us to surrender to love so that love might transfigure and transform us. How this plays out in each person’s life is as unique as their DNA and life story. Some of us are called to be contemplatives, others mighty activists for justice and peace, others prophets, others artists, others ordinary husbands and wives and mothers and fathers, living quiet lives but lives filled with dignity and hope and joy. The point is, when we become intimate with God — truly listening to God’s word for us, and truly sharing our “word” with God — then things will change. The point behind being transfigured and transformed is that we become more than what we were before. This is somewhat frightening, for it is out of our sphere of control. But if we trust God, let down our armor and let God in, and breathe through our resistance, then the Holy Spirit will take charge and miracles will ensue.

So the experience of intimacy with God is the process by which we realize union with God. It’s a process that never ends, so we never experience final (perfected) union. But the truth is that union has been our birthright all along. We are falling in love for the first time with our lover who has been passionately present with us for all eternity.

For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

— Matthew 17:20 NRSV

One concept I have run into again and again, both among Christians as well as among others with an interest in mysticism, is the idea that mysticism is about experience which is somehow different from faith.

The logic seems to go like this: as the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). But mysticism, by contrast, is about the experience of God’s presence in our lives. Why would anyone settle for mere faith, which seems to be built on hope rather than real, lived experience? Wouldn’t it be better to trade faith in for a more direct, immediate, feel-it-in-your-bones sense of God’s reality and activity in our lives?

The Apostle Paul says we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1). But if faith justifies us, how much more will direct experience contribute to real, lasting intimacy with God?

The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes an “either/or” relationship between faith and experience. Somehow, if we have a real enough experience of God, then we no longer need faith. “Faith is not important to me, because I know in my heart that God is real and God is present in my life,” someone once proudly told me. She was young, self-assured, a minister in a small church. Politeness prevented me from telling her what I thought of her aplomb: it sounded to me like she hadn’t had a dark night experience yet. Yes, mysticism is all about experience, but mysticism is both bigger and deeper than experience. Sometimes God comes to us through absence. Sometimes faith is tested in the crucible of doubt. And even when an experience hits us over the head with the proverbial two by four, we still must reflect on the experience and interpret it, with the language, values, and religious symbols that contribute to our sense of spiritual identity. Such a process of reflection and interpretation is a process that depends on faith: faith in the very trustworthiness of our own experience, and in our knowledge and ability to reflect on and interpret it.

Why is faith important? Why is it essential, even to the mystically inclined? For one very simple reason: No one has a perfect experience of God. Anyone who says that they do is just fooling themselves. Perfection is a concept related to completion, which implies that nothing can ever be perfect in human experience until we reach the end of our lives. In the meantime, faith is the tool by which we navigate all the great unknowns of life, including our relationship to the future, to our deep unconscious, and yes, to everything about God that is beyond our puny little experience, no matter how personally meaningful such experiences might be.

If you embrace the contemplative life, you will be opening your heart to a quest for experiential intimacy with God. This is a good and beautiful thing. But it doesn’t render faith unnecessary. On the contrary; faith becomes more important than ever. Cultivating faith is at least as important as daily meditation or the practice of virtue.

And how do we cultivate faith? Two thoughts here. “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ,” proclaims Paul (Romans 10:17). Dust off your Bible, my friend; and if you aren’t already participating in the weekly Mass or worship service of your faith community, then start doing so. Participating in regular worship and daily scripture reading is of central importance when it comes to nurturing faith. Granted, the “word of Christ” can come to us in ways other than through Sacred Scripture. But keeping the ear of our hearts open to listen for the word of Christ however it may come to us does not render Sacred Scripture (or corporate worship) unnecessary. On the contrary, reading (and hearing) Sacred Scripture will attune us to recognize the word of Christ however it may come to us: in the words of a homeless person, in an insight while reading the news, in a conversation with a trusted friend. The more we listen for the word of Christ, the more we nurture our faith. And do I need to point out that such listening requires the cultivation of inner silence?

My other thought about cultivating faith has to do with the meaning of the word itself. Merriam Webster defines faith as “belief and trust in and loyalty to God.” So to nurture faith, we need to nurture belief, trust, and loyalty. Belief, incidentally, is not so much about certainty of the mind as openness of the heart; trust and loyalty are also heart-centered virtues. So faith comes not from the intellect so much as from the will: it’s not what we think, but the choices we make, that make us faithful. I choose to trust God. I choose to open my heart to God. I choose to stick with God, no matter what. Out of these choices, faith happens.

And faith does not replace or crowd out the experience of contemplative awareness of God’s presence: rather, it sets the stage for such an encounter to take place.

We went to see Where the Wild Things Are last night. It’s a basic go-to-the-otherworld-to-find-yourself kind of story, in which our hero Max (wonderfully portrayed by the too-cute-for-words Max Records) responds to his mother’s exasperated declaration that he’s “out of control” by running off to where the wild things are. He talks them out of eating him and into getting appointed King of the Wild Things, and the Wild Rumpus ensues. At first Max finds it’s great to be king, but eventually things start to change.

Early reports about the movie suggested that Maurice Sendak (who wrote and illustrated the original children’s book) was happy with Spike Jonze directing the movie because he didn’t try to turn the wild things into just big cute, cuddly teddy bears. In other words, he let them stay wild. Apparently this made the movie studio nervous, and rumors swirled during the production of the movie that it was too scary for kids. Even more to the point, it doesn’t have a tidy, feel-good ending, even though its faithfulness to the book does offer a sense of resolution. Although Max follows the rules of the hero’s journey and makes his return at the story’s dénouement, we viewers are left with the unsettling implication that the wild things remain wild — and in the wild. You never know when they’ll show up again, or when Max will run off for another visit.

My daughter, who normally has a pretty low tolerance for movies with an edge, liked it, and she and I howled like wolves all the way from the theater to the van.

I’m reminded of one of the most important lines in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when one of the characters (it differs from book to movie) notes that Aslan is not a tame lion. The truth is, we always want to tame God, just as we always want to tame anything and everything about our own deep wildness, and about the stories we tell about “the wild” —i.e., the otherworld. We want the fairy-folk to be cute cuddly garden sprites, despite the fact that in Celtic folklore they are not only not-so-small, but also both dangerous and unpredictable. Tolkien wisely gave us the diminutive hobbits as our ambassadors to his otherworld, forcing his readers to identify with small protagonists because ours is an age that insists on keeping our fairy tales small as well. From a hobbit’s-eye view of things, even a domesticated otherworld can still seem mighty big and dangerous. Something similar is at work with Spike Jonze’s reimagining of Sendak’s story, where a child has to encounter some life-sized monsters. Of course, the psychological punchline is that the wild things all live inside of himself. “Inside all of us is a wild thing,” proclaims the movie’s trailer, set to a spunky, bouncy soundtrack. Guess what? Aslan is inside all of us, too, and he’s waiting to roar.

We all want Aslan to be tame, and we want God to be safe and predictable. This is the temptation behind fundamentalist religion, where God is reduced to a robotic father-figure-in-the-sky who rewards the good and punishes the bad. And then there is the God of liberal religion, who just is a big nice guy who loves everybody unconditionally and who pretends that evil doesn’t exist. Where the Wild Things Are (the movie) takes aim at both of these kinds of domesticated deities and blows them to smithereens. It may not be an explicitly religious movie, but it makes some pretty important theological statements nevertheless.

So if the Ultimate Wild Thing isn’t just a robotic dispenser of justice or a feel-good postmodern psychotherapist, then just what are we dealing with? I’m not sure I can answer this question, for after all, we are dealing with Mystery here. Part of why Aslan remains Not a Tame Lion has to do with Aslan being the Ultimate Mystery. But just as in the book version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the beavers assure the Pevensie children that while Aslan isn’t safe, he is good, I think we can start with that small measure of comfort. After all, if God isn’t good, then the universe is meaningless, and we all have to create our own good, much like Max and and the Wild Things build their fort. But without a deeper and higher meaning, sooner or later we tear down the forts we build. But some things endure, like love, compassion, noble acts of self-sacrifice for the good of others, the belief in fairness even when life seems pretty unfair. That these things persist over time, to me is evidence enough that good exists, not as a convenient human construct but as a real ontological principle, somewhere deep inside the ultimate Wild Thing. And that makes me willing to get on the boat and join Max in the adventure. Even though I suspect it will get pretty dangerous out there (or is that “in there”?).

My dear readers, the veneration of saints’ relics is not a central part of my spirituality, Catholic though I may be. And I’m cynical enough to wonder if any 1st century relic can ever really be accepted at face value (I mean, just how many relics of the “true cross” are there?). However, with this disclaimer and caveat in mind, even I have to say that this is really, really cool:

The relic is only in the United States for a limited time and the Monastery is fortunate to host it for a day. Look at it this way: if it’s an actual relic of Mary Magdalene, then… wow. And if it’s not, it still represents an interesting piece of cultural history as well as an object of fervent devotion for many centuries. So either way, this is worth putting on your calendar.